1. Field
The present disclosure relates to a moving robot and a method of recognizing the location of the moving robot.
2. Background
Developed for industrial uses, a robot generally has been in charge of a part of factory automation. Recently, as the application fields of robots have expanded, medical robots, aerospace robots, and the like are being developed, and a home robot that can be used in an ordinary household is being produced. A robot cleaner, which is a representative example of the home robot, may clean a predetermined area by suctioning the surrounding dust or foreign substances while moving within a predetermined area autonomously. The robot cleaner may generally have a rechargeable battery and an obstacle sensor that can avoid obstacles while moving, thereby performing cleaning while autonomously moving.
An application technology using a moving robot, particularly the robot cleaner, is being developed. A method of recognizing the location of an intelligent moving robot that recognizes land marks on lateral sides thereof is disclosed in Korean Patent Publication No. 1305405 (Publication date: Sep. 2, 2013) whose entire disclosure is hereby incorporated by reference.
In the above document, an image of a ceiling may be captured by a robot mounted with a camera facing upward, and a ceiling part of the image is separated from a wall part (lateral part) thereof. The separated images may be flattened, and then by extracting characteristics to be registered as landmarks, location recognition may be performed.
However, according to the document, since landmarks on lateral sides thereof are used, 3-dimensional (3D) virtual coordinates may be inaccurate. Also, when errors caused by wheel skids are accumulated, a location error may become extremely large. Since the location is recognized by only using a camera, it may be difficult to extract characteristics in the dark.